Apollo Pagers (New to Board)

Hello Guys!

Been reading for quite some time now, and just thought I would finally join and introduce myself. My name Is Justin Leckie, I am one of the Director of Operations at DPC Apollo Pagers.

I wanted to reach out to you guys and ask for your take on Apollo Paging Equipment. How are you guys using them, what do you like/dislike about our product? How Can I improve the overall experience? Any Features that we are lacking or needing help on, similar products that we may not offer?

Anyways just trying to pick the brain of the consumer on how I can make everything better.

The one thing I find lacking is that once activated, the pager doesn't stop alerting until one of the buttons is pushed. If the pager goes off when I'm not around it (already on the truck- pager in car or on gear rack), then it'll beep and drain the battery until we get back. It might be better if the pager goes off for a determined period of time then stops and/or beeps intermittently (once a minute?) until the page is acknowledged.

The one thing I find lacking is that once activated, the pager doesn't stop alerting until one of the buttons is pushed. If the pager goes off when I'm not around it (already on the truck- pager in car or on gear rack), then it'll beep and drain the battery until we get back. It might be better if the pager goes off for a determined period of time then stops and/or beeps intermittently (once a minute?) until the page is acknowledged.

BGilmore07 - This is a simple change in the programming. Some like the feature of continuous alert, we can program reminder alert, or alert after first so many seconds. Please let me know if you are having any problems.

As an electronics technician who worked for one of the dealers of Apollo's products, I have some concerns about their durability based on the number of failures we saw in the VP200 series of pagers.

We experienced a high number of failed units out of the box, as well as units that failed within a few weeks of being deployed. When your technician in California was asked what the failure was, it was next to impossible to get an answer. The failures we observed while rolling out the pagers were related to receiving a call and alerting, voice recording failures, pagers not passing audio, decreased battery life -- after swapping numerous sets, amongst other things.

I disassembled a unit myself, and was shocked to see cold solder joints, and a transistor that was quite literally blown apart. We replaced the transistor with a identical replacement, and the unit worked again for a few days until the transistor was blown. We reported this to DPC/Apollo, and had numerous units over the course of a year back and forth to your service center. To my knowledge, this issue still exists.

When programming your pagers, the interface is pretty simple. What's not documented, or documented well, are the double negatives necessary in order to set up some of the features. The software's labels and interface is bare bones, but poor in over all use. Entering in a frequency, setting button assignments, custom alerts, and tone information is pretty easy. Setting up alert length, voice recording features, and some of the other checkbox items that are not documented well enough makes it difficult to provide a quality product to the consumer.

With that said, it was difficult for us to continue to offer the VP200 to agencies in large quantities because of the numerous failures that were experienced. If there were a local or regional service center, repair times wouldn't be as bad. We experienced somewhere along the lines of a month to send a pager out, have it repaired, and then receive it back. As a Motorola Service Center, we could log in to our Motorola accounts and see the status of our units, what was wrong with them, and see accurate tracking information at any point along the line. We usually received our Motorola paging products back within 5-8 business days if it wasn't something we could fix in house (IE: Minitor V's didn't have parts available at that point).

These issues made me incredibly nervous about bidding a 30+/- pager order to my own agency, and we opted to stay with the Minitor V from Motorola.

Sounds like I will be sticking with my Motorola stuff. You get what you pay for.

There are good alternatives out there and they don't have to be as expensive as a Minitor either! Our WatchDog Pagers are typically 20% less expensive and come with a 5 year warranty that even covers the belt clip and housing. The best way to see if you like our pager is to try it out. We encourage that by offering free demos with no credit card required.

Sorry for the shameless plug but I just want people to explore their options before they settle for the same old same old!

As an electronics technician who worked for one of the dealers of Apollo's products, I have some concerns about their durability based on the number of failures we saw in the VP200 series of pagers.

We experienced a high number of failed units out of the box, as well as units that failed within a few weeks of being deployed. When your technician in California was asked what the failure was, it was next to impossible to get an answer. The failures we observed while rolling out the pagers were related to receiving a call and alerting, voice recording failures, pagers not passing audio, decreased battery life -- after swapping numerous sets, amongst other things.

I disassembled a unit myself, and was shocked to see cold solder joints, and a transistor that was quite literally blown apart. We replaced the transistor with a identical replacement, and the unit worked again for a few days until the transistor was blown. We reported this to DPC/Apollo, and had numerous units over the course of a year back and forth to your service center. To my knowledge, this issue still exists.

When programming your pagers, the interface is pretty simple. What's not documented, or documented well, are the double negatives necessary in order to set up some of the features. The software's labels and interface is bare bones, but poor in over all use. Entering in a frequency, setting button assignments, custom alerts, and tone information is pretty easy. Setting up alert length, voice recording features, and some of the other checkbox items that are not documented well enough makes it difficult to provide a quality product to the consumer.

With that said, it was difficult for us to continue to offer the VP200 to agencies in large quantities because of the numerous failures that were experienced. If there were a local or regional service center, repair times wouldn't be as bad. We experienced somewhere along the lines of a month to send a pager out, have it repaired, and then receive it back. As a Motorola Service Center, we could log in to our Motorola accounts and see the status of our units, what was wrong with them, and see accurate tracking information at any point along the line. We usually received our Motorola paging products back within 5-8 business days if it wasn't something we could fix in house (IE: Minitor V's didn't have parts available at that point).

These issues made me incredibly nervous about bidding a 30+/- pager order to my own agency, and we opted to stay with the Minitor V from Motorola.

When and who were you ordering these through? Do you remember who you talked to? If you need the 1000+ Reference of dealers and Fire Depts using our Units, Ill be happy to provide. Why dont you call me with this situation. Ill send you out another Demo, and I will personally check myself for these issues you are claiming. I also would love to pick at your brain, because I am supporting our Dealers personally to go over all their issues.